We’re so used to using computers and phones that they feel like an extension of our brains — it isn’t just me, right? A Google query comes back as fast as a thought, and the information at my fingertips feels intangible like the information in my brain.

Artificial intelligence isn't just for scary algorithms poised to take over our lives — it can also be a fun thing to play with, as we learned when we trained a computer to generate Lifehacker headlines. But you can't play until you have some good data sets to start with.

All the cool services are getting data dumps - that little link you click somewhere in a settings menu that triggers the service to send you all the data it collects from you (and everything you've used it to do, theoretically).

Both Telstra and Vodafone unveiled unlimited data plans for mobile customers this week and some are, again, questioning the use of the term 'unlimited'. Rightly so! We've seen it all before with ADSL broadband, they say!

This time it's a little different. The telcos have wisened up.

Remember when we all got a little creeped out that genetic testing companies can be forced to turn over your data to law enforcement? Ah, those were simpler times. Police found the Golden State Killer last week thanks in part to a relative's sample in a publicly available DNA database. The same kind that your relatives may already be in.

They often say that quality trumps quantity, but when it comes to mobile data, I'd argue that you may as well get as much as you can for your money.

There are lots of ways to stay in touch with friends and family using your smartphone, but the classic phone call is still the method of choice for plenty of people. Unfortunately, call quality hasn't exactly kept up with the digital revolution, leading to muddled conversations -- sometimes even on high-end smartphones.

I'm a big fan of year-in-review charts and graphs, like Spotify's 2017 Wrapped, or even designer Nicholas Feltron's personal annual reports. Here's another good one: Analyse your calendar with the Year in Review tool from the makers of iPhone calendar app Pod.

A team from the University of Melbourne has been able to take de-identified data of 2.9 million Australians and put it back together to identify who the data pertains to. This has potentially placed the personal data on more than one in ten Aussies in public, with sport stars and other public figures likely to be targeted.

I just migrated my photos off of Flickr. Yes, it's 2017, and I was still using Flickr. Why? Because I'd been using it since 2005, it's free, and the mobile app is… fine. But now that it seems like Flickr is joining the likes of AOL and Earthlink in the internet graveyard, it's clearly time to leave. Why did it take this long for me to leave to begin with?

"Phone season" is well and truly in swing, with many of this year's big devices now available. There are a few more yet to be come, but a plethora of new phones is the perfect time for telcos to fight over customers looking to upgrade. This has led to some shakeups in the plan space, with plenty of new big data options.

Two trains leave their stations and travel towards one another. Michelle is on Train A and is scrolling through her Instagram feed. Ben is on Train B and listens to Spotify while reading the news. Forty-five minutes later, the trains pass one another. Who has used the most data?

Innovation is not easy. It involves experimentation, taking risks and investing resources in projects that may not deliver the outcomes you want. Optimizely takes a data driven approach to testing multiple scenarios so you can make better decisions about what's best for your business. I spoke with their new managing director for ANZ, Dan Ross, about their Australian launch and the opening of Australian offices in Melbourne and Sydney and how decision making is not about hippos.

If you've been wondering when USB Type-C will take over the world, look around you -- its slow and inexorable march is continuing. The latest update to the standard, dubbed USB 3.2, doubles the existing 10Gbps speed of USB 3.1, on the same cables. Here's everything you need to know.

Google's been making strides toward the creepy over the past few weeks. Last week the company figured out how to tie real-world credit card transactions to its own advertising network to further its ad platform effectiveness. This week, Google has started experimenting on some user's search pages: They will take your personal data and display it next to some traditional search data with the hopes that you'll eventually look for everything through their classic search box.

A terabyte isn't cool, you know what's cool? A petabyte. And companies like DigitalGlobe are creating more of them than they can upload to the cloud. That's why Jeff Bezos has a service for shipping huge amounts of data via traditional roadways.

Mondays are long, busy, stressful and apparently, according to Instacart sales data, not very sexy. Sorry, Monday.

Have you ever accidentally deleted a file, a folder or formatted an entire partition? It happens to the best of us, but all hope is not lost. There are a whole lot of free data recovery and undelete utilities available online, though it can be just as hard to tell which ones will actually work (and won't turn out to contain malware). If you're feeling a bit lost, we've rounded up the top five free data recovery tools for you, right here.

There's no shortage of things that could happen to our phones (falling out of pockets, into pools, even out of planes) - but even though the device may be gone forever, that doesn't mean you need to lose your texts, contacts, and photos.